BBC Radio paying 'more than the market price' for presenters

The BBC proposed unacceptable constraints on the Comptroller and Auditor General's access to information and his discretion to report to his findings to Parliament. The situation arose because the Comptroller and Auditor General (the head of the National Audit Office) does not have statutory unrestricted rights of access to the BBC, which he does with all other publicly funded bodies.

The BBC has a wide range of costs for similar programmes within and between its radio stations. The average cost for an hour of comparable music programmes on Radio 2 is more than 50% higher than on Radio 1. For most breakfast and 'drivetime' slots, the BBC's costs are significantly higher than commercial stations, largely because of payments to presenters.

In this Report, 'The Efficiency of Radio Production at the BBC' (HC 285), the Public Accounts Committee sets out a number of conclusions and recommendations:

• The BBC has not used cost comparisons across its own programmes, or against commercial radio, to identify scope for efficiencies.
• The BBC uses its principal value-for-money indicator - cost per listener hour - to justify the cost of presenters on the basis of audience size. However, the indicator does not provide assurance that programme costs are the minimum necessary to reach the required quality and intended audience.
• For most radio programmes, presenters' salaries represent the majority of programming costs. However, the BBC is paying more than the market price for its top radio presenters.
• The BBC has prevented full public scrutiny of the value-for-money of expenditure on presenters by agreeing confidentiality clauses with some presenters.

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